In Blender 2.8 how do I render the world once for all view layers?
You can get precisely what you want by creating a dedicated, empty background render layer with an environment pass.
1.) Under &quot;Render properties&quot; on the &quot;Film&quot; panel select &quot;Transparent&quot;. All of your current layers will now render a transparent world background.
2.) Create a new layer and disable ALL collections in the Outliner. In the &quot;View Layer Properties&quot;, enable an environment pass.
3.) Now in the compositor, use an &quot;Alpha Over&quot; node to put everything above the &quot;Env&quot; channel of the background layer we just created.